Klea Blackhurst: Everything the Traffic Will Allow

Grandel Theatre Cabaret

Once upon a time – not all the long ago, really – musicals didn't use amplifiers or microphones and the term "acoustic instrument" was never used because it was redundant. If you were a musical theatre actor, you were expected to have the ability to bounce notes off the back wall of the house. That's why tenors and sopranos were so popular; their voices tended to have what Anna Russell refers to as "a good cutting edge".

For four decades one of the great non-soprano note bouncers was the late Ethel Merman. From the moment she stepped on stage at the age of 21 to knock the socks off Broadway audiences in Gershwin's Girl Crazy in 1930 until her final performance as the last Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly in 1970, Merman was in a class by herself. Her brash, no-nonsense approach and her brassy, often-parodied singing style made her something of an American institution, while her ability to sell a song made her a Broadway legend and a favorite of songwriters as diverse as Gershwin, Berlin and Herman.

Cabaret artist Klea Blackhurst freely admits that Merman was a powerful influence on her own development as a singer. You can see it in her energetic and upbeat stage presence and you can hear it now and then in her clear and powerful voice. That doesn't mean, however, that Everything That The Traffic Will Allow: The Songs and Sass of Ethel Merman, her tribute to Merman, involves anything as obvious as imitating Merman's voice. What you get is a fascinating collection of songs from the 14 shows in which Merman starred – many of them rarely performed gems – all done in Blackhurst's own effervescent style.

Sometimes, as in the opening medley of "I Got Rhythm" and "Johnny One-Note" (from Girl Crazy and Babes In Arms, respectively; the latter is the only non-Merman song in the show), that means the kind of bright, take-no-prisoners approach for which Merman was noted. But it can also mean a shrewd re-thinking of a Merman classic like "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from Gypsy. Within the context of the show, the song is a distillation of Mama Rose's delusional optimism and blind ambition. Blackhurst begins the song with that same defiant tone but then quickly segues into something more wistful and nuanced, making it completely her own.

Between songs there are fascinating facts and amusing anecdotes about Merman and her relationships with musical theatre legends from Gershwin to Sondheim, delivered with a bright and appealing informality. We learn, for example, that when she auditioned personally for the Gershwins for Girl Crazy she'd had almost no theatrical experience at all; and that when she asked Stephen Sondheim to explain a particular passage in "Rose's Turn" she listened patiently to Sondheim's explanation of the psychology behind the lyric and then asked "yeah, but does it come in on the down beat?"

Throughout the evening Blackhurst is smoothly backed by the Pocket Change Trio, consisting of Kim LaCoste on bass, Larry Newsome on drums and Blackhurst's talented arranger and music director Michael Rice on piano. They don't get the opportunities for solo work that, for example, the group backing Paula West got last month, but Rice does the chance to act as a kind of second banana in "Make it Another Old Fashioned, Please" and "I've Still Got My Health". Blackhurst herself even gets into the instrumental act by accompanying herself on the ukulele while singing "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" – a typically 1920s instrument for a typically 1920s song that Merman introduced in George White's Scandals Of 1931.

Klea Blackhurst's Everything The Traffic Will Allow: The Songs And Sass Of Ethel Merman will be lighting up the Grandel Theatre through this Saturday [November 16, 2002]; call 314-533-8825 for ticket information.

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